ostic inevitably
begins in terms of the rationalist bias, in craving for coherence and
consistency of statement; and his most circumspect negations stand for
precaution against inconsistent credulity. But precisely in virtue of
that bias, he is the opponent of the supernaturalist bias. He does not
in effect merely say, 'I do not know': he implicitly says 'You do not
know' to the professor of non-natural knowledge.

Bias, then, being clearly posited, the debate at once turns--as indeed
it usually does even without formal acknowledgment of bias--to a
competition of claims to consistency. All debate presupposes agreement
on something. As antagonists _in_ religion appeal either to God-idea or
to Bible, to probability or to usage, to expediency or to authority, or
to historic evidence for one revelation as against another, so
antagonists upon the fundamentals of religion appeal to accepted laws of
proof, measures of evidence, consistency of reasoning. The most
tenacious of traditionists must put his case in a 'reasoned' form. And
therein, of course, lies the secret of the gradual historic dissolution
of traditional credence in the minds of those who come at all within the
range of the argument. Every act of reasoning--as priesthoods are more
or less clearly aware--is a concession to the rationalist position to
begin with; and only superior skill in fence can ostensibly countervail
the advantage thus given to the disputant who claims that reason must
determine beliefs. Reasoning against the validity of reason is
recognisable as suicidal by all who can reason coherently. If reason be
untrustworthy, what is the value of reasoning to that effect? Either you
go by reason or you do not. If not, you are out of the debate, or you
are grasping your sword by the blade, a course not long to be persisted
in. Even the skeptical defender of religion, following religious
precedent, says, 'Come now, let us reason together.'

Thus we reach the standing anomaly that the defence of faith against
rationalistic criticism alternately takes the courses of pronouncing the
appeal to reason a foolish presumption, and of claiming to reason more
faithfully than the rationalist. The two positions being, to say the
least, incompatible from the point of view of dialectic, we must fight
upon one or the other at a time; and, having briefly dealt with the
former, we may fitly consider at greater length the latter. The more
philosophic assailant of the ratio